


One-Way Street

by Rei_Rei (anti60ne)



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-17
Updated: 2014-10-17
Packaged: 2018-02-21 08:44:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2462036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anti60ne/pseuds/Rei_Rei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Touka didn't know just how much she would sacrifice for Kaneki until he's on the brink of death, and she would still stay by his side even though it's irrefutable that he could never love her the way she loves him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One-Way Street

The bus shudders forth on the uneven road as drizzle begins trickling down. Touka watches raindrops gather on the window pane beside her. Her phone goes off, startling her from her trance.

"Hello?"

"Where did you go? You left all of a sudden--"

"I'm on the bus." On the other end of the line, Hide falls silent. Touka waits. Maybe he will let it slide and she won't have to explain. "Are you going to Kaneki's place?"  
  
The bus had pulled to a stop and a clique of high school students clamber on noisily. Gazing at the glisten of their damp hair, Touka is suddenly envious of those students. She would have been still enrolled in university if Kaneki hadn't fallen ill and she'd taken it upon herself to care for him.  
  
"He needs food," she says almost defensively. Her grip around the small duffel bag on her lap tightens, as if she's afraid someone would steal it from her.

Hide is quiet. "Say hi to him for me," he says finally, a sigh squeezed into the last syllable. He hangs up without waiting for a reply. The click of the receiver clangs harshly in Touka's ear.

Why don't you do it yourself? Touka thinks, irked, as she pockets her phone into her parka. She looks out the window squinting through the steady rain, then presses a button signaling the bus to stop.

Two weeks. It's been only two weeks since Kaneki was discharged from the 22nd Ward Hospital, an institution which serves exclusively ghouls. He was supposed to stay for at least another week, but he wanted to go home. He'd told Touka that he'd rather take his last breath in his own bed. When the lab results came out, the doctors had told him he had 60 days left. They'd found GIV--ghoul immunodeficiency virus--in his blood. Kaneki had been in a daze when they broke this news to him. Tears slowly and quietly streamed down his face before he asked to go home, a request which the doctors were reluctant to fulfill. In the end, they caved to Kaneki's vacant eyes, an eerie quietude about the 20-year-old that made them abandon professional advice. Kaneki didn't say a word throughout the discharge process, but that didn't mean he wasn't torn up inside. Touka would know; she was there.

Touka gets off at the stop in the 18th Ward and immediately breaks into a sprint. Normally, she wouldn't care for the rain beating down on her and pelting over her parka, but she doesn't want her duffel bag to get wet. And Kaneki is waiting. She hugs the bag close to her chest as she runs, pulling the hood of her parka over her head as far as the synthetic fabric allows. The soles of her shoes slap on the pavement and send droplets splashing up her bared legs--she's in a short skirt because it had been warm earlier in the day. Ignoring the discomfort, she keeps up her pace until a two-story apartment looms into her view, three houses past the bend. She slows to a stop as she shuffles under the eaves, ragged breaths caught in her throat as she breathes in the misty evening air. Fumbling in her pocket, she scoops out the keys and opens the door.

"I'm back!" Touka shouts into the apartment after she pulls the door closed. The walls suck her voice in like vacuum, dark and utterly silent. She wonders if Kaneki is asleep, and worries that he might have blacked out again. The place was dimly lit by the streetlight slipping in through the only window in the apartment; either Kaneki had been sleeping the whole day, or he didn't bother turning on the light. Touka doesn't mind the dark--she feels more comfortable surrounded by shadows, anyway. A Turkish angora slides across the back of a couch and down to the floor, slinking toward Touka noiselessly. She sidles up to the ghoul and paws at her ankles. 

"Hey, Mimi." Dropping to her heels, Touka sets the duffel on the floor and gives the cat a long pet from her head, along and down the lone black stripe in her white-furred back. "Where is Oniichan?" Mimi purrs as Touka's fingers curl around her belly and strokes. "In bed? I see." Touka kneads lightly the area behind Mimi's ears before getting up on her feet, picking up the duffel. "I promise to feed you soon, okay? Let me check on Oniichan first." She walks into the living room, turns right and strides down a short corridor until she comes to a closed door. Her room. 

She knocks softly and puts her ear up to the door. Nothing. The door knob creaks as it turns in her hand. 

"Kaneki?" 

The room is so dark Touka blinks rapidly, squinting to place her friend somewhere on the bed. Eventually her eyes make out a mound, a person cocooned in blankets with their back to her. Kaneki remains still as Touka takes careful steps into the room. "Kaneki, I brought food." She places the duffel on the writing bureau by the wall, unzips it, and takes out a brick of human flesh packaged securely in scent-proof wraps. As she nears, she can hear strained breathing -- faint and raspy, like a candle wick sizzling before it snuffs out. Kaneki struggles to roll to his back and sit up, Touka's hand on his bony back. She unwraps the brick for him and raises it to his mouth before he takes it with trembling hands. Kaneki's eyes are somewhere on the blanket tossed over his knees, and Touka watches as he takes a measly bite. A bite so small and reluctant that it's as if he's eating for mere survival, no savory sensation tingling the underside of his tongue as it used to. He chews slowly, eyes glazed over and beyond Touka. Swallowing the bolus down, he clamps his lips shut and drops the brick on his lap.

"You need to eat more."

He shakes his head, almost imperceptibly. 

"Kaneki! Eat. Please." She reins in a desperate cry and he finally lifts his eyes to her--they're filled with a tranquility so placid it shreds her heart.

"That's enough, Touka-chan."

She breaks down when he begins folding the wrap over the brick. It looks nearly the same as before he took a bite from it. Her legs give out and she slumps against the bed, her hands clenching the sheets. Unbidden tears pour from her eyes and fling outward as she shakes her head furiously.

"It's only been two weeks! How could you give up so easily? And I'm still here. I'll always be here--"

"Touka-chan," Kaneki cuts her off as he covers her tight fist with his frail hand. "It's okay."

"No, it's not. It's not okay! There has to be a cure, and I'll find it."

"Does it really matter, now?"

The emptiness in Kaneki's words swallow Touka whole and she's falling. Weightless, she falls into a bottomless hole that she'd dug for herself.

 

/////

 

"Do you even know how he got it?"

Hide meant the virus. The virus that had Kaneki bedridden in a matter of days, the disease progression unusually rapid partly due to Kaneki's half-human form. Touka was beginning to resent how everyone skirted around the topic like it was something unmentionable; like a ghoul version of AIDS, one of the most stigmatized human diseases. Except GIV was like that to some extent; it was the only illness which had no cure, not even for ghouls.

"It doesn't matter. I don't care about stuff like that."

She looked Hide in the eye, and she knew instantly that he didn't believe her. Everyone knew, even if they didn't want to, how GIV could be transmitted in two ways: direct contact with ghoul blood or semen. There had been no feeding for a month, and Tsukiyama was the only other ghoul with the virus. Still, Touka thought Kaneki did what he had to in order to stay alive; he'd always been reluctant to feed, even on the bricks prepared and stored by Yoshimura. The irony was that now he was dying because of it.

Touka just didn't know how far Kaneki would go to avoid feeding. Why did he do it?

"Because Tsukiyama offered."

Touka's head shot up, wide eyes on Hide. There was a wry look on his face, as if he was repulsed by the words spilling from his own mouth. Touka then realized that she'd uttered her thoughts out loud.

"...what?"

"You didn't know?" Touka told herself that she'd imagined the sneer tugging Hide's lips. She pulled her eyes away and settled her gaze on a coffee stain on the saucer before her. She knew about Tsukiyama, of course. It was no news to anyone that the tall, charming man with hair the color of faded bruises was a promiscuous taster. Tsukiyama claimed to be drawn to the finest of cuisine, yet he was indiscriminant when it came to ghouls like Kaneki--beautifully fragile and unreservedly kind. But Kaneki wouldn't. He wouldn't stoop to Tsukiyama's level and indulge his decadent needs.

"You mean he forced him." She wouldn't believe otherwise.

"If that's what you think, then you really don't know Kaneki at all."

Touka dragged her eyes to Hide's face. He looked... disappointed, and the gloom in his eyes almost made Touka disappointed with herself, too. Except she didn't know why she should be, and all she could think about was killing Tsukiyama.

 

 

/////

 

Touka can't tell how long she's been crying into Kaneki's blanket. The room is as dark and quiet as when she first entered, and for a moment she thinks she's somewhere else, somewhere not by Kaneki. Struck by panic, she straightens up and looks around frantically until she realizes she's still knelt by Kaneki's--no, her--bed, and the boy is curled up right next to her, sound asleep, his hand dropping to the bed after she lifted her head. He had been petting her on the head as she sobbed, she remembers. She squeezes her eyes shut and tries to recall the way it'd felt when he threaded his skinny fingers through her hair. The memory fades quickly, like a mirage vanishing once the illusion is recognized by the eye, and it's already gone when she raises her hands to Kaneki's head. Her shaky fingers hover above the strands of his brittle-grey locks, longing and afraid at the same time.

"I'm going to kill him, Kaneki," she breathes into the dark. The whites of her eyes fill out into an ominous shade of obsidian, blood-red webbing out from maroon pupils. "If I can't save you, I'll kill the person that made you this way."

 


End file.
